


welcome to new york

by sometimeswebreakbeforeweshine (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breakup, Dean being like a BABE, Dean gives up hunting to be with Sam in stanford, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Sam, Hurt Sam Winchester, John Winchester Being an Asshole, Mutual Pining, Pining, Protective Dean Winchester, Slow Burn, Stanford Era, Such a sweetheart, Unrequited Love, but only mentioned lol, college!Sam, dean's bi btw, multi-chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 17:42:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11925954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/sometimeswebreakbeforeweshine
Summary: title will make sense later!!!! but like. it's very very angsty and AU AU AUThis is an AU rolling around in my head a lot recently, and I missed writing and I just wanted to and what am i even saying this note is too long just enjoyPs: this is an au where jess is not a character (yet? This is really Really AU) (Like dean gives up hunting when Sam’s in his second year at  school lol) (Sorry this is Intense)pls read lmao Validate Me





	welcome to new york

**Author's Note:**

> italics denote flashback!

 

Sam does  _ not  _ like waking up at 7 in the morning, and he hates doing it even more when there’s no good goddamn reason to. There’s no reason for him to be awake on the Saturday morning the first week classes are out. 

 

He’s thoroughly annoyed, his eyes still sleep soaked when he opened his apartment door, hair mussed and only pajama bottoms and an old Stanford jacket. There’s shit all over his floor, his roommates gone for the summer and his ex-

 

He’s not thinking about her. He’s staying positive. He’s fine. He’s fine. 

 

He’s getting the door and he’s not thinking about how her hair is the softest thing he’s ever touched, and he’s not thinking about how she laughed when he kissed her in front of her house, laughing and impulsive and she teased him about wearing a Stanford shirt to impress her. He’s not thinking about how she’d yell at him for keeping his shit messy, without  _ mixing  _ her stuff in with the mess. 

 

_ “Sam! You know you’re gonna slip and fall at some point, you know that? You’re gonna hurt yourself!” she chided as he kissed the side of her jaw, grabbing his bag getting ready for their event. _

 

_ “All my  _ important  _ things are on the floor, baby!” he laughed. She’d never get used to the way he looked at her with proper adoration, like she was made of things that made stardust, the way he looked at her like she placed the stars in the sky for her home to be it. _

 

_ She frowned and he immediatley mirrored her actions, as she tossed off her green cardigan on the ground. _

 

_ “Baby-” he started mistaking the gesture. _

 

_ “If your important things are on the floor than something of mine better be there.” _

 

_ He paused.  _

 

_ “You’re going to get cold.” _

 

_ “Fair price to pay for being the romantic reason you slip and die.” _

 

_ He chuckled warmly, kissing the side of her head, and draped his sweater of your shoulders.  _

 

He hasn’t picked it off the floor since, even when she’s picked him out of your life. 

 

He’s not thinking about how many times she’d stood at his door when he opens it to see-

 

Sam thinks he sees his heart jump out of his chest. 

 

“Dean.” It’s a question, and he tries to make it sound like a statement, but it’s not. Dean looks  _ good,  _ denim jacket around his shoulder like armour, sunglasses on and hair undone, all flashy and intense but his smile real, the joy written on a face like words in a book.

 

“Sammy.” the green eyed man says back, imitating his tone. “Is this a bad time?” peering inside the room and seeing no one and nothing but clutter around. 

 

“It’s Sam,” he corrected, suddenly a bit intimidated and mad at himself for wanting to hug his brother right now.  “And no, it’s not.”

 

His eyes raking in the sight of a man he hasn’t seen for about a year’s time. Dean looks good, but he also looks like it’s  _ been  _ a year, additions of scratches on his hands and a small scar on his chin, all signs of what their  _ family business  _ could entail. Sam wasn’t there to patch him up, Sam wasn’t there to fix it for him and worst of all he wasn’t even there to call and even  _ know  _ that his brother had been hurt.

 

Dean’s his brother, and the word means so much, even as he avoids stepping towards him like there’s a physical breach between them.

 

The apartment is shitty, but Dean can’t help but notice there’s a fence and it’s not picketed, but it is white, and there’s daisies in the windowsill. It’s beautiful and Sam looks ike he  _ belongs,  _ looks like he’s glowing and Dean tries not to revel in it, seeing his little brother not scarred or scratched or bruised, well  _ fed,  _ like he’d been eating more than gas station food and spaghetti-o’s. 

 

Sam looks  _ good,  _ Stanford hoodie around his torso like armour, hair messy, all homey and laid-back but his shock real, the surprise written on a face like words in a book.

 

Fuck, the 15th. It’s been a year. 

 

Dean must need something. 

 

“What do you need, Dean?” and instantly, Sam regrets saying it, seeing the smile fall off his brothers’ face like he’d been called something foul and was offended. (Which, you know, for Dean would have to be  _ very  _ foul. Very  _ very  _ foul.)

 

“Well I don’t know what crawled up your butt and died, but I need you to get it out of there.”  

 

“I know you, Dean and you don’t just pop up. You want something, and you don’t have to pretend it’s company.

 

Dean swallowed, flicking up his sunglasses, and revealing a black eye. Purple and blooming over his face, and Sam on impulse yanked him inside and Dean.

 

Dean missed that look, concern etched on his brother's’ face. Missed that look that meant  _ family _ .   

 

“What the hell happened?” Sam’s voice is sharp like he’s never seen Dean hurt before. (He has, he has so many times and he wished every single time he could be the one to make it better.)(He wasn’t though, he wasn’t and he had not been.)

 

And it pisses his off when Dean just laughed. “Dad happened. He got pissed and he, he um. We fought.”

 

It’s like a stalemate, like there’s never been a minute apart. Sam staring at Dean, willing him to say something about it, because Dean and their ad fought but he didn’t  _ hit  _ him, not directly. At least not often enough for Dean to be standing in his apartment saying it like it didn’t matter.

 

“We were fighting. I know, it’s stupid because he always wins- but I was mad that he told you to never come back, I was mad that I couldn’t call you to see how college was going, and he was drinking, you know how he gets, we were just yelling and he hit me.”

 

“He just hit you?” Sam deadpanned. John gets angry and John hits but he doesn’t do it randomly, and Dean doesn’t  _ leave.  _ Dean’s the “good” kid that stays when his dad  gets mad. He’s Dean. 

 

He’s sure Dean doesn’t want him to mention that all he’s ever done is protect Sam and all he ever wants to do is be the person that Dean can be proud of.

 

“Sam, drop it.”

 

“If you’re going to be crashing here, you have to tell me why.”

 

“You’re a bitch.”

 

“And you’re a jerk, a jerk who’s going to tell me why you are here when all you’ve  _ ever  _ done is defend him to me-”

 

“I said that if you weren’t going to be here with us then there was no point in the family business at all. That I’d give it up to keep my brother safe. Okay? No big thing.”

 

Of course it was a big thing. It was a big fucking thing. 

 

It was a ginormous thing, it was the kind of thing that could swallow worlds, could swallow the boy's whole as they stood, because there is  _ nothing,  _ nothing that Dean loves like hunting, nothing that he’d give that life up for and there was nothing that Dean would ever defy his father for.

 

Nothing but Sam.

 

“No big thing.” Sam agreed, a platitude. 

 

He makes microwave mac and cheese and they eat it while watching shitty TV, chick flicks on lifetime, and Dean says he hates them, and Sam acts like he believes him. 

 

~oOo~

 

“So Sammy, saw you got yourself a girlfriend.” 

 

Sam froze. 

 

Dean smiled smugly over his shoulder, lazily googling some low profile cases he could do if he's going to stay in the Stanford area, maybe a ghost if there was one around. Sam was fixing coffee and was about to lecture Dean about his feet on the coffee table, but he mentioned his girlfriend.

 

Girlfriend.

 

“Where the hell would you get that idea?” he said before he could censor himself. 

 

“I don’t know who you think you’re foolin’ but the picture of that girl on the wall doesn’t really suggest your friends.” Dean chuckled pointing to photo on the wall, and Sam can’t take it down. 

 

It’s a photo of them tacked on the wall, with a push pin she used to keep things up in her room, his eyes closed and burst her mid-laugh, her lips on his cheek and her wearing a moss green sweater, and he remembers,  _ can’t ever forget  _ the way he had his arms around her waist and her fingers trained on his arm, the way she laughed in his ear and how loving her felt like a revelation. She looked beautiful, like a dream, a beautiful memory. Her hair was cropped shorter than usual and on that day it smelled like jasmines, got in his face and he didn’t complain once. 

 

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

 

“Oh, so you  _ want  _ her to be your girlfriend, or, or better yet, you want her to be  _ my  _ girlfriend.” Dean teased, unaware of how Sam’s chest was beating faster at the idea of her being his girlfriend again. Of her being the girl who loves him, of loving her like he mattered. And he knows Dean’s teasing, but Dean gets all the girls, always has and a part of Sam thinks that if Dean was around when she was, she might not have been  _ his  _ girlfriend at all. She might’ve been another girl Dean stole the heart of. 

 

“She, um. She used to be my girlfriend.”

 

“Ah, shit Sammy, I’m sorry,” he spoke quickly, noting how Sam’s face fell. 

 

“No biggie. Just haven’t had the time to take the pictures down.” 

 

And Dean raised Sam, knows when he’s lying and knows the way words escape from his lips and when they’re untruths, knows the way his brows wrinkle and his jaw tightens at her mention, and he  _ knows.  _

 

He doesn’t however, know what it looks like when his brother was heartbroken, until now. Sam’s different-and he can’t figure out the exact words for it. He’s duller and he won’t smile as much, wont find joy in shitty TV jokes and Dean’s also never seen his brother look at a damn photo like it could wreck his whole damn world. 

 

Dean’s used to being able to fix anything with a smile or a joke because no matter what his job is to  _ protect  _ Sam and make him okay, and there’s pretty much no remedy for the thing Sam’s hurting with.

 

He doesn’t seem to know what to reply with, so he keeps quiet.

 

He’s gonna get that girls’ number, though. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> pls leave a review pls pls !!!


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